Lord Of The Flies Reflection Essay, Research Paper

Compare and Contrast Essay : Lord of the Flies

Lord of the Flies demonstrates a very subtle yet important message, mostly about the way that humans can turn almost any situation into an evil one. The novel is fully based on attempting to understand this message. Unfortunately the movie for various reasons does not do the novel justice in the plot and detail department.

The novel is chock full of details and mind indulging plot twists. But the movie not only leaves these out but it also forgets to include or changed essential fragments of the story. One of these elements was the nationality of the boys who are stranded on the island. In the novel the boys are British yet in the movie they are American. This not only affected appearance such as clothing and accents, but also the way that the boys acted reflected the different cultures that they had grown up in and was different in each version. An example of this if how they thought of the army, in the novel they mentioned links to world war 2, yet in the movie they only spoke of the army as someone who would save them and war was never really mentioned.

Also a different change from the novel to the movie was the time setting between the two. In the novel the estimated time was the 1940’s, and the boys reflected this by starting off on the island as good school children that had respect for their elders, etc.

In the movie the time frame was anywhere from the late 80’s to the early 90’s, it was somewhat hard to define an exact date. The time setting showed in the technology that was present at the time such as helicopters. Also in the movie the boys started off on the island as boys who are going to military school and were partially desensitized to violence, possibly from the television and media of the 80’s and 90’s which is a great leap from the 40’s. This quite possibly might have made a difference in how the children reacted to Jack and all of his rebellious ideas.

One other difference between the two stories is the main source of conversation and fears that drove the boys into their mindsets. In the novel the “beast” was constantly mentioned and drove the idea of a deadly monster roaming loose among them. This greatly affected the way the boys reacted to anything that would get their mind off being eaten by the beast. Such as hunting with Jack, playing a sort of “reverse physiology” on themselves by hunting instead of being hunted, this made them feel more secure in my opinion. In the movie the beast is simply the pilot who stayed alive on the island and doesn’t put fear into their hearts for very long, it just doesn’t have quite the same effect as the novel’s beast did.

When it comes down to the knitty gritty, I would definitely choose the novel over the movie if it came down to which was more interesting, but that’s what happens when you have to stick 200 pages in an not much more than a hour.